Kampo medicines have been positively taken for improvement in health and prevention of disease in recent years. The unique bad odors of Kampo medicines cause difficulties and obstacles to the intake thereof.
Tablets containing Kampo medicines having bad odors have been coated with sugar to suppress the odors, or have been compounded with sweeteners to mask their bitterness.
Sweeteners, if compounded, undesirably increase the calories of Kampo medicines to be taken for prevention and improvements of diabetes, obesity, and the like. For this reason, methods of improving bad odors of Kampo medicines without compounding sweeteners have been required. The content per tablet of Kampo medicines is large, and a number of Kampo medicines are raw powders having large specific volumes. Such bulkiness limits the amount of an excipient for compression to be compounded, and as a result, tablets are readily worn. For this reason, an excipient for compression having high compression compactibility has been required.
Patent Literature 1 describes a formulation that can reduce the bad taste unique to Bofutsushosan by compounding a microcrystalline cellulose.
As an excipient to enhance compactibility, microcrystalline celluloses described in Patent Literatures 2 to 5 are known.